Vashty Ma­haraj

It’s a strange phe­nom­e­non to grow up with your coun­try. At first, you are un­aware of it. In your ear­ly years, no­body re­al­ly fussed about it un­less you were ac­tu­al­ly born on Au­gust 31.

But whether you were born be­fore or af­ter that date, as long as you were born in 1962, you are in­deed a child of in­de­pen­dence, the first gen­er­a­tion born in­to an in­de­pen­dent na­tion.

For this writer, the on­ly time I tru­ly took stock of be­ing the same age as my coun­try was when the Trinidad Guardian was putting to­geth­er an In­de­pen­dence pub­li­ca­tion in the ear­ly 80s and I vol­un­teered to do a piece. I don’t re­call my age at the time but I was in my ear­ly 20s, young, con­tem­pla­tive, naïve, sil­ly…all the things one tends to be at 20-some­thing.

It can’t have been ter­ri­bly deep or life-chang­ing for any­one. But for me, that be­gan my year­ly re­minder that I was as old as my na­tion.

So, when Lord Fun­ny sang How Yuh Feel in 1987 at a ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion for the 25th an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence, I was ripe for a piv­otal mo­ment, for a line that would ring in my head for every year of in­de­pen­dence since then: “Twen­ty-five years have gone, how yuh feel?”

If you don’t know the ca­lyp­so, these are the lines (take a lis­ten on YouTube some time and feel that mo­ment when he sings the cho­rus):

“Twen­ty-five years have gone, how you feel?

You feel you put your shoul­ders to the wheel

You feel you per­spire and achieve

You feel you clean up the mess

You feel you could stand up proud and say

You feel that you did your best

You feel that we just we just keep mov­ing on

Or back­ing back on we heel

Twen­ty-five years have gone, how you feel?”

Lat­er on he sings pre­scient­ly:

“You feel is joke we jok­ing or for re­al

You feel we wuk hard and pro­duce

You feel that thing go­ing fine

You feel we reap­ing the ben­e­fits

Or you feel we on the de­cline…”

One should not let op­por­tu­ni­ties go by when they present them­selves, so as serendip­i­ty would have it, I sit here writ­ing for the Trinidad Guardian again four decades lat­er and de­cid­ed that this is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to ask my­self and some oth­er in­de­pen­dence ba­bies that I have known over the years, how they have felt grow­ing up with their coun­try—if any­thing at all—and what are the things that con­cern them, as well the hopes they have for this still fledg­ling na­tion.

For high school friends Sh­eryl Ann, Di­ane, An­jani and Jacque­line, be­ing born in 1962 had lit­tle im­pact in their ear­ly lives. Ex­cept for Di­ane, no one re­al­ly sees them­selves as an “in­de­pen­dence ba­by.”

“I do re­fer to my­self as an in­de­pen­dence ba­by, but on­ly in that I tell peo­ple I’m as old as the na­tion when they ask me my age,” Di­ane says.

The very prag­mat­ic An­jani de­clares, how­ev­er, “I do not con­sid­er my­self to be an In­de­pen­dence ba­by, be­cause I was born un­der British rule.”

She adds: “The good thing about be­ing born in 1962, is that I al­ways knew the num­ber of years of In­de­pen­dence (in pri­ma­ry school). Oth­er­wise, I do not think about it. Hu­man years pale in com­par­i­son to years of na­tion­hood— while my coun­try is very young, I cer­tain­ly am not.”

“When I was younger, it nev­er oc­curred to me that I was born in an aus­pi­cious year, one filled with hope and change (al­though my birth year 1962 made it eas­i­er to re­mem­ber the In­de­pen­dence date for quizzes!),” Sh­eryl Ann says, adding: “For my par­ents, look­ing back, I could now see them think­ing of the hope and change that was to come for their new­born.”

For her, grow­ing up with her coun­try meant that our gen­er­a­tion was “the barom­e­ter for our in­de­pen­dence and that we need to be able to show that the de­ci­sion to move to In­de­pen­dence was well worth it.”

Asked about their thoughts on the coun­try and their hopes for the fu­ture, this is what the women had to say:

Di­ane: ‘We may have gained in­de­pen­dence, but we still hold our colonis­ers in awe. We think that any­thing com­ing out of Eu­rope is bet­ter than what we have here. We think a de­gree from a for­eign uni­ver­si­ty is bet­ter than what UWI has to of­fer. We think the same way about goods and ser­vices from abroad. This is re­flect­ed in the many for­eign fran­chis­es that flour­ish here.

“I am sad­dened when I think about the state of our coun­try. I would not want to live any­where else. Tri­nis are some of the nicest peo­ple I have met. I love that we do not take our­selves too se­ri­ous­ly. Where else in the world can you de­cide on the spur of the mo­ment to ditch work and go to the beach…but this may be part of the prob­lem too.

“There are some chal­lenges here though. I am most con­cerned about the crime sit­u­a­tion. It used to be that you were safe in your home, but even here I feel scared. I miss the days when you could go for a walk at any time, or sit out­side with friends and not have to be look­ing over our shoul­ders in fear of a grue­some at­tack. My hope is that we can re­turn to a time when per­son­al safe­ty was not a pri­ma­ry con­cern for cit­i­zens.”

Jack­ie: “Al­though we are an in­de­pen­dent coun­try, we are not in­de­pen­dent as in­di­vid­u­als As a na­tion, we are still di­vid­ed by race and pol­i­tics. Sad­ly, the po­lit­i­cal/so­cial lead­ers use this for their own per­son­al gain and agen­da.

“I see a lack of dis­ci­pline by cit­i­zens who are ap­par­ent­ly un­able to abide by T&T laws and con­sti­tu­tion­al reg­u­la­tions, es­pe­cial­ly Town and Coun­try reg­u­la­tions. My hope is that we as na­tion­als see each one and all as ‘Trinidad and To­ba­go’ cit­i­zens, and not judge each oth­er based on colour, creed, or eth­nic back­ground.”

An­jani: “Our coun­try is tru­ly beau­ti­ful and di­verse, where peo­ple gen­er­al­ly live peace­ful­ly with each oth­er. The politi­cians per­pet­u­ate the di­vi­sions in or­der to se­cure po­si­tions in the gov­ern­ment. The chal­lenges fac­ing us are crime, in­fla­tion/cost of liv­ing es­pe­cial­ly for the poor, and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple. I hope that we can reach a point where we have a gov­ern­ment that is tru­ly non-par­ti­san and cares for the pop­u­la­tion, where there is an im­proved tourism sec­tor that en­com­pass­es our di­ver­si­ty and eco-tourism, and that there is fair tax­a­tion, in­clud­ing for doc­tors, lawyers, en­ter­tain­ers, land­lords, hair­dressers.”

Sh­eryl Ann: “Trinidad and Trinida­di­ans have changed in the last 61 years. Trinidad has be­come a pros­per­ous is­land with many com­pa­nies mak­ing it part of their suc­cess­es. Our re­sources may be de­plet­ed but many fam­i­lies have built suc­cess­ful lives around it. I be­lieve that now is the time to move on to oth­er ways to pro­mote Trinidad. But a change to Trinida­di­ans may be nec­es­sary. We need to be proud and own our coun­try, not just for our car­ni­val and so­ca and shark and bake, and dou­bles. But we need to start se­ri­ous­ly think­ing about the en­vi­ron­ment, help­ing our neigh­bours like we did in the old days, bring­ing up our chil­dren with val­ues, which starts at home.

“The main chal­lenges are the in­flu­ences of the great North Amer­i­can cul­ture of in­stant grat­i­fi­ca­tion and want­i­ng to live life like the Jone­ses. With this come peo­ple who re­sort to rob­bery and vi­o­lence to achieve this. We are the par­ents/grand­par­ents of these peo­ple and as such, did we do a good enough job of in­still­ing good hon­est val­ues in them?

“My hope is that we can re­turn to ear­ly In­de­pen­dence days of hope and am­bi­tion to show the world we can be a coun­try where all creeds and races found an equal place, where the po­ten­tial of our young peo­ple can ri­val any oth­er coun­try, where garbage is not dumped hap­haz­ard­ly, where peo­ple want to em­i­grate for study and ca­reers and not be­cause of fear. I want par­ents to un­der­stand that hap­py and suc­cess­ful peo­ple are cre­at­ed by the val­ues in­stilled at home. Home is our first class­room.”

My fi­nal ques­tion to these class­mates was the ad­vice they would give to the young peo­ple of our coun­try. The con­sen­sus was the need for all to take pride in their coun­try and to make a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion, what­ev­er that might mean for them.

Di­ane: “Hav­ing been a high school teacher for most of my life, I have seen def­i­nite changes in our young peo­ple. When we were in high school, we were al­ready learn­ing to be in­de­pen­dent, from taxi­ing to school, to choos­ing our sub­jects in Form 3. By the time we were ready for uni­ver­si­ty, we were fill­ing out our own ap­pli­ca­tions and go­ing through the reg­is­tra­tion process by our­selves.

“But over the years, I see par­ents mak­ing more and more de­ci­sions for their chil­dren. While we want to pro­tect them, young peo­ple must be al­lowed to make their mis­takes, and learn from it. We did not grow up with he­li­copter par­ents, so how did we be­come like this?

“As we cel­e­brate our coun­try’s in­de­pen­dence, it is up to us to build this na­tion. Our young peo­ple must be taught to em­brace the val­ues of uni­ty, di­ver­si­ty and re­silience that have brought us here. We must work to­wards a so­ci­ety where every cit­i­zen en­joys the fruits of free­dom. It’s on­ly then that we can tru­ly be in­de­pen­dent.”

An­jani: “Seek em­ploy­ment out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go but re­turn with your wealth and ex­per­tise to build our na­tion.”

Jack­ie: “It’s time for us to go back to ba­sics—have re­spect, obey the laws, con­serve our en­vi­ron­ment, be con­sid­er­ate of each oth­er. It’s time for young peo­ple to un­der­stand that they (young and younger) are part of a much big­ger pic­ture called The Fu­ture.”

Sh­eryl Ann: “Be proud of Trinidad and To­ba­go in a way that is mean­ing­ful to Trinidad and the world. In my trav­els to var­i­ous coun­tries, I see the fierce loy­al­ty that young peo­ple have for their coun­try.

“They treat tourists like they treat their fam­i­lies. There is no sense of haugh­ti­ness but an in­her­ent love of their coun­try and their peo­ple and they care about what peo­ple think about their home. Do not adopt a “what is in it for me” at­ti­tude be­cause when you win, T&T wins. This is what we need to in­stil in our peo­ple.”